US President Donald Trump has pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence after being convicted of running an underground online marketplace that was used by thousands of drug dealers to conduct over $US200 million ($A321 million) worth of illicit sales using bitcoin.
Trump made good on a campaign pledge to end the imprisonment of Ulbricht, 40, that began with his arrest in 2013 in what became a landmark US prosecution launched only a few years after the emergence of the popular cryptocurrency.
Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media website, that he had spoken to Ulbricht’s mother on his first full day in office.
“It was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,” he wrote.
“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponisation of government against me.”
Trump’s administration is expected to significantly reverse course on what had been a crackdown by regulators on the cryptocurrency sector during former president Joe Biden’s tenure.
Meanwhile, Trump defended his decision to grant clemency to people convicted of assaulting police officers during the 2021 attack on the Capitol and suggested there could be a place in US politics for the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, extremist groups whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy against the US.
Trump used his opening hours in his second term to erase the records of more than 200 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting officers at the Capitol siege on January 6, 2021, and free from prison those convicted of trying to overthrow the government, as he granted reprieve to all 1500-plus people charged in the insurrection that was sparked after he refused to accept his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
At least 140 officers were injured — many beaten, bloodied and crushed by the crowd — when Trump’s supporters tried to overturn Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat to Biden.
Before the Capitol attack, the Proud Boys was a group best known for street fights with anti-fascist activists when Trump infamously told the group to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate in 2020 with then-presidential candidate Biden.
The group’s former top leader, Enrique Tarrio, and three of his lieutenants were convicted of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election.
Tarrio was serving a 22-year prison sentence, the longest of any Capitol riot case, before Trump pardoned him on Monday. Some members of the group marched in Washington on Monday as Trump was sworn in to another term.
When pressed by a reporter about the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and whether there was a place for them in politics, Trump said, “Well, we have to see. They’ve been given a pardon. I thought their sentences were ridiculous and excessive.”
with AP
https://thewest.com.au/news/crime/trump-pardons-silk-road-founder-of-online-drug-website-c-17466356
